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01/01/2012, 20:13
Book Review by DEREK OGDEN
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It’s not widely known that General Motors head honcho Rick Wagoner went cap in hand to Ford when things were getting really tough during the global financial crisis, asking the arch rival to join GM, at the time the largest car company in the world, to get together to stave off collapse.
Ford, headed by Alan Mulally, former Boeing high-flyer, newly head hunted by the Blue Oval, was in the middle of its own rescue package and turned the GM general down flat. This intriguing scenario is just one of many laid bare in a new book, Once Upon a Car, by Bill Vlasic, an award winning business reporter presently Detroit bureau chief of the New York Times.
The book chronicles how the USA’s Big Three automobile manufacturers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, teetered on the abyss during the 2008 financial crisis. Boardroom and factory battles between automaker chiefs, union bosses, Wall Street analysts and investors, including the arch opportunist, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, are written up like chapters in a page-turning thriller novel.
Vlasic goes behind the scenes to get a roster of unforgettable characters to open up – many for the first time - about what was going on on mahogany row, in union halls and assembly plants, and finally, the Oval Office, as Doomsday drew near.
CEO Wagoner tried to get GM back on the right road only to be forced to resign as a condition of the US government bailout brokered by President Barack Obama; Bill Ford, great-grandson of Ford legend Henry, had to bite the bullet and call on an outsider, Mulally, to come to the rescue; and Chrysler, reeling from an unhappy marriage to Germany’s Daimler-Benz, was changing leaders like flat tyres on a flint-rock road.
Vlasic takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the US automobile industry, which has had the ultimate say, to a great extent, on what has happened to vehicle makers in Australia. The most chilling aspect is the story is still unfolding.
Once Upon a Car, Bill Vlasic (William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers). Available from HarperLuxe and HarperCollins e-books.
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